Little bit of liveblogging from Free Culture Phase 2.

Started off with a presentation by Thenmozhi Soundararajan from Third World Majority talking about the concept of media justice and the right to communicate as a cornerstone of a movement towards a more just society, about the need to enlarge the scope to include people (farmworkers in Central America for instance) for whom a radio station is more relevant than a blog, about the need to bridge content and policy, the need for a larger "blueprint" which can tie these things together, but which need to be developed from the community level.

She also spoke briefly about the need for political activism to maintain its independence from the world of philanthropy, something that I've felt for a while. I added some of my usual gobbeldygook about the necessity of building positive visions to reach a wider audience and help prevent burnout, then a brief comment from a policy guy reminding us that "policy sets the rules" and then Downhillbattle.

Holms, Nicholas and Tiffany presented their upcoming Broadcast Machine internet TV project, speaking to the need to take aim at the mainstream, to level the cultural playing field. They spoke about the possibility of millions of people making a living as artists with the best quality rising to the top.

So then this hits me.

We need to be independent of philanthropists for activism, from corporations as artists. To make a living as artists and activists on our own terms, we must develop our own economies. The potential for these economies to develop is the real threat to the corporate establishment (such as it is). The first response is generally co-option. The second is policy, unless the situation moves too fast -- as in napster -- in which case legal action becomes the first recourse. As things move faster and faster, the more and more becomes the case.

True. Policy sets the rules, but the rules only maintain their force when people believe in them. The policy that's developing around IP in many ways violates the social contract because it is not about protecting sales, it's about protecting control (which links back to sales, but it's not a direct relationship).

There's an advantage inherant in independant culture and politics because it is less risk averse and therefore more likely to produce breakthroughs. At the moment the slow grind of everything is both stagnant and trending in bad directions, so I think we can agree that breakthroughs are needed. But we can't realistically expect the establishment to provide them.

At the same time I really feel Holms when he talks about setting our sites on being the new mainstream. Whether it's culture (indy/underground music in the top 40) or politics (reforming a major political party to break the current stalemate), the great potential of our time is to energize a generation to be different, to be ourselves, but not to do so by or through dropping out.

Up next is a more policy oriented talk.